I have never done any binding, so no personal experience to relate. I suggest going to “stewmac.com”. Search on the term binding. You will get a list of the tools and supplies they sell. At the top of the list there is a tab titled “learn”. That will take you to a long list of instructional videos.

You’ll usually be more likely to get responses if you ask an actual question.Or at least tell us what problems you’re having?I’ve done binding on a LP copy I made about 20 years ago, but probably don’t have much advise to offer.

Your best plan of action will be to Google the phrase “how to install binding on a guitar”. You will find both written instructions and video instructions. I built a classical guitar once back in the 1970s from a book. Came out very nice! Once you understand what it entails, it is not as hard as it seems.

Planeman

-- Always remember: It is a mathematical certainty that half the people in this country are below average in intelligence!

It will be a lot easier to bind with plastic but I have onlyused wood. Bending accurately enough and notbreaking the binding is the trick. I use masking tapebut some use bicycle inner tube wrapped around theguitar.

sounds like a nice project. I made an electric guitar from maple wood a few years back but never an acoustic. I have also seen a DIY kit offered for some acoustic guitars before and would love to make one. It will be great to see you finished product. I just posted 2 photos of the electric guitar I made. The post is waiting for approval since i just joined up this site today.

Not to take away from LJ, but I recommend joining the mylespaul.com forum and asking your questions in the luthier section. That forum has something like 20,000 members and many are luthiers making some truly spectacular guitars (electrics and acoustics).

If you simply want to know the basics of how to to it, as suggested earlier, there’s lots of how-to info at the Stewmac.com site, and of course probably many YouTube vids and other online sources. Google is your friend.

Thanks for all the replies. The story goes like this. My neighbor gave me a Martin guitar kit she had and I never turning down a challenge as far as building with wood thought it would be cool to try it! So, low and behold I followed the vague instructions and when it came to ” THE BINDING” I was lost. With further investigation I found that it was a little bit technical to precisely cut the binding into the edge of the guitar body with out the proper set-up. Not wanting to screw the guitar up I put it away for awhile to research the process and that’s where I’m at currently. As I said previously thanks for all of the replies. There is just a ton of information out thre on guitar building.

Routing the binding ledges is my least-fun part ofmaking a guitar. It’s really difficult to do it by handwith a purfling cutter in my experience… I am sureI could practice and get good but a router setupworks too and the purfling cutter is good for makinglittle corrections where the router cuts a little too shallow. It’s not essential, but often on the back ofan acoustic guitar the doming is prounouncedand what happens with the router is the ledge isshallower in the waist of the guitar. The purflingcutter (or gramil) is useful for fixing this and thebinding looks a little nicer that way. If you don’twant to do it, nobody will probably ever notice though.

You want a ledge about 1/10” deep for wood binding,a little deeper depending on how much purfling you’readding.

Lee Valley now sells a cool little high quality plungebase for a dremel-type tool. It’s not too expensivecompared to the small-run things that were available15 years ago when I got started making guitars. Withsuch a tool, due to the small base, you can route a binding ledge pretty accurately and also cut therosette channel.